An Introduction to Film

SPFX, transports a computer hacker inside a
computer; the Star Wars trilogy, consisting of
Star Wars(1977; director: George Lucas; cine-
matographer: Gilbert Taylor), The Empire Strikes
Back(1980; director: Irvin Kershner; cinematog-
rapher: Peter Suschitzky), and Return of the Jedi
(1983; director: Richard Marquand; cinematogra-
pher: Alan Hume); Barry Levinson’s Young Sher-
lock Holmes (1985; cinematographers: Stephen
Goldblatt and Stephen Smith), which, in the
“Glass Man” sequence, created a new standard
for image resolution by laser-scanning the image
directly onto the film stock; and James
Cameron’s The Abyss (1989; cinematographer:
Mikael Salomon), which won the 1989 Oscar for
Best Visual Effects, marking Hollywood’s official
embrace of the new technologies. Cameron’s
other movies, including Terminator 2: Judgment
Day(1991; cinematographer: Adam Greenberg)

and Titanic(1997; cinematographer: Russell Car-

penter) were equally innovative.

In 1993, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park(cine-

matographer: Dean Cundey) became an instant clas-

sic with its believable computer-generated dinosaurs,

and Cundey’s work on Brad Silberling’s Casper(1995)

introduced the first computer-generated lead and

talking figure. In 1988, Robert Zemeckis’s Who

Framed Roger Rabbit (cinematographer: Dean

Cundey) combined computer-generated imagery

with actual settings and characters, so cartoon-like

images entered the real world. Zemeckis reversed

that pattern in Forrest Gump(1994; cinematographer:

Don Burgess) by using CGI to insert footage of Gump

(Tom Hanks) into real footage of Presidents Richard

Nixon and Lyndon Johnson and former Beatle John

Lennon.

In the last ten years, the major CGI achievements

have been even more astonishing. Andy and Lana

SPECIAL EFFECTS 281

Modern special effects The special effects in Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey(1968; special-effects designer: Kubrick;
supervisors: Wally Veevers, Douglas Trumbull, Con Pederson, and
Tom Howard; cinematographer: Geoffrey Unsworth) took up more
than 60 percent of the movie’s production budget and required
nearly eighteen months to complete. These SPFX, representing the
state of the art at the time, add to the movie’s cinematic beauty
and philosophical depth. Early in the movie, Dr. Heywood R. Floyd,
an American scientist, is dispatched via shuttle to Clavius, a U.S.

base on the moon, to investigate reports of unusual happenings

there. Here we see a pod, launched from the shuttle, as it

approaches its final landing via a platform moving down a red-lit

shaft into the base’s quarters. Douglas Trumbull, whose

technological contributions to the art of the movies were

acknowledged by a special Oscar in 2012, was also responsible for

the astonishing effects in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of

the Third Kind(1977), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner(1982), and

Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life(2011).